Jose's verdict on Brighton
Jose Mourinho felt our first half performance cost us at Brighton on Sunday.
Leandro Trossard scored what turned out to be the only goal of the Premier League encounter on 17 minutes. They also struck the post and Gareth Bale cleared Lewis Dunk’s header off the line as we struggled to make an impact at the Amex.
The arrival of Carlos Vinicius off the bench for the second half did make an impact, however, and the Brazilian striker forced the save of the game from Robert Sanchez on 75 minutes. The goalkeeper also did well to hold onto an Erik Lamela free-kick as we pushed on in the latter stages.
Jose reflected: “We didn’t start well... mentally, with that happiness, that positive feeling you need to play football. I felt the team started the game sad, and when we conceded that first goal, it was a complete loss of dynamic in the first half.
“The second half was totally different. We couldn’t score, we didn’t create that many, many chances, our dominance was a dominance with a couple of good chances but no more than that. We didn’t score, we were not happy not to score a goal, but in the second half the feeling was much better.”
Jose was impressed with Carlos’ display in the second half, adding: “In the first half, we tried to give Sonny the dynamics that Sonny is used to, which is Harry of course connecting with him, and having a player to always play between the lines.
“We tried to do that by not playing Carlos and playing Gareth and Bergwijn in those positions. In the first half, not because of them, but the dynamic of the team made it look like we were not successful in that.
“In the second half Carlos gave us a target, a focal point. Of course, he cannot drop because it’s not his quality to drop and to connect, but he’s a focal point in attack, he gives good dynamic, lots of movement, creates more spaces for other people and the way we finished the game, Lucas, Lamela, Bergwijn, Sonny, four players with Vinicius as a focal point, they had problems. In the end they finished with four centre-backs, plus the full-backs and did that to secure the game.”